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Rank Math Review: Is It The Best WordPress SEO Plugin?

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December 20, 2022

Rank Math is relatively new to the saturated market of SEO plugins which is dominated by Yoast. But this kid is making a lot of buzzes and is considered one of the Best WordPress SEO plugins.

What is so good about Rank Math? Why there is a lot of noise about Rank Math? Let’s find answers to these questions in this Rank Math review article.

Along with that, we will also see how Rank Math stands against Yoast, and other SEO plugins and what are the best Rank Math settings to get the best out of it.

Many people ( including me) dumped Yoast, just because it does not make sense to pay hundreds of dollars when you are getting all these features for FREE.

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I am using Rank Math since the time it launched and I must say, it is one of the Best SEO plugins for WordPress that I have ever used.

The internet might be flooded with sponsored articles of other SEO plugins, But this review is compiled after I experienced the product for a long time and I will vote for this plugin any day over other plugins.

Why Do We Need A SEO Plugin?

Why can’t WordPress itself ship with SEO features?

Well, we have all been waiting for an answer for a long time. Probably that does not fit their business model. If WordPress comes with SEO features, who will buy Yoast ( Or any other SEO plugin)?

SEO plays an important role in blogging. Without proper SEO, it’s impossible to rank in search engine result pages.

WordPress does not ship with an SEO module. So if you want to have SEO functionality in your WordPress blog, you have to have an SEO plugin.

Gone are those days when you can rank even without doing proper SEO. The reason being the competition was very low at that time. It’s more than magic if you can rank without doing proper SEO these days.

All WordPress SEO plugins come with an intuitive checklist to show you how your posts are SEO optimized. Those plugins check SEO based on numerous parameters.

Anything that shows wrong in the checklist can be worked upon and fixed before you publish the article.

Well, that’s the tip of the iceberg. SEO plugins come with a bunch of other features that you need to rank high on the search engine result pages. We will discuss that in the later part of this article.

Evolution of Rank Math

I think the timing of the Rank Math launch was great. Early in 2019 when Yoast was struggling with numerous bugs, Mythemeshop came up with the Rank Math plugin.

People were looking for an alternative SEO plugin and Rank Math was bang on target.

That’s incredible because it is hard for people to dump the market leader ( Yoast) and go for a newbie like Rank Math. Not only did people switch to Rank Math but they actually loved it.

Rank Math was developed by Mythemeshop back in 2018. The team is headed by Bhanu who knows in and out of SEO and that’s why he could able to develop Rank Math.

Rank Math has over one million downloads from the WordPress repository and an almost 99% five-star rating. That shows the popularity and the quality of the plugin.

Initially, Rank Math launched the free version, but later they launched the Pro version.

They did not trim down the free version features after launching the Pro version. Other companies do not do that. Those who know the story of UberSuggest may relate to this what I am talking about.

Rank Math Key Features [ Free And Pro]

I was always fascinated by a couple of premium features that Yoast offers. I always wanted those features on my blog.

But the price for Yoast Premium was way too high for my budget. So I had to settle for Yoast Free.

With Rank Math, I had a chance to explore those premium features without any cost.

Here are some of the features that Rank Math already has, so you don’t need an extra plugin to achieve the same function.

As you can see below, if you go for Rank Math, you are expected to save around $1675 because all these features are already integrated into Rank Math.

Having said that, Rank Math is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress, Below are some of the key features of Rank Math ( Both Free And Paid versions).

The interface plays a big role in the overall customer experience. Rank Math has a very nice interface and all navigations are well laid out.

Rank Math shows a setting wizard as soon as you activate the plugin. The easy-to-use navigation will take you through the initial setting wizard smoothly.

The dashboard shows all the features that Rank Math has on offer. You can toggle it on / off, to activate or deactivate different modules. This modular approach is great because Rank Math is NOT dumping you all the features that you may not need.

Although the initial setup wizard covers the basic setup, you can dig into detailed settings if you want to control Rank Math the way you want.

Based on the module you turn on, the respective settings are also added in the settings menu on the left side as shown below.

This is one of the features that I always wanted in the Yoast Free Version. It is not always a smooth ride to play around with a single keyword and rank it high.

With Rank Math, by default, you can add five keywords, but, if you add the following piece of code to your themes function.php file, you can add unlimited keywords.

Here is the code in case you want to change the focus keyword limit to 10.

**
 * Change the Focus Keyword Limit
 */
add_filter( 'rank_math/focus_keyword/maxtags', function() {
    return 10; // Number of Focus Keywords. 
});

The first keyword will be your primary focus keyword.

The cherry on the cake is that while typing these focus keywords, Rank Math also auto-suggests common keywords from Google Search Console.

So you end up with keywords that are actually getting searched in Google. You can write your article based on those focus keywords and you will have a higher chance of getting ranked in search engine result pages.

In the free version, you can not re-arrange focus keywords. You need to delete and type the keyword again.

In the pro version, you can re-arrange focus keywords, and the content analysis will analyze the article based on that arrangement.

This is a very useful feature, in case you want to change your primary keyword after publishing the post.

An integral part of keyword research is to check how keyword search queries are trending over a period of time across different geographical locations.

Google Trend is a popular tool that you can use to do this job.

Rank Math pro version has Google Trend integrated into it. You can check and compare the trend of different keywords on the Rank Math interface itself.

The feature is available only in the Rank Math pro version. However, you can always use the Google Trend tool separately in case you want to settle down for the Rank Math free version

Google Trend integration helps you to check the performance of your focus keywords and even compare the trend over a period of time across different locations.

To access this feature you need to click on the following button ( Its a pro version feature)

This feature I love the most about Rank Math. When you type in the focus keyword, Rank Math automatically shows the related LSI (Latent Semantic Keywords) keywords.

You no longer need a separate tool to do LSI keyword research. You can use Rank Math for that.

As you can see below, when we were typing the focus keyword ” Rank Math”, the tool is automatically showing relevant LSI keywords.

The only requirement is that you need to create a free Rank Math account and connect your website to it. After that, whenever you type in the focus keyword, LSI keywords will show up.

Well, Content Analysis is available in all SEO plugins. How Rank Math is different is that it offers a detailed content analysis. Even minor checkpoints are also captured in Rank Math.

Detailed analysis may not be required for an experienced blogger but for a newbie, it’s a very good feature.

The content analysis checkpoint changes colors based on the focus keyword selected and how good the optimization has been done.

Rank Math is compatible with all themes, all plugins, the classic editor, and the Gutenberg editor. If you are using Elementor or Divi to design your posts, the Rank Math SEO checklist is available there too.

The below image shows the on-page SEO checklist for posts designed in the Gutenberg editor. As you can see that Rank Math evaluates your articles based on the following parameters.

Below is one example of what the interface of content analysis looks like.

Ideally, we should target a score of 100 but it’s not always possible. I personally target a score of 80 and that always works.

One more good thing about content analysis is that it provides ratings in numeric value unlike Yoast that only shows values as “Good” or ” Bad“.

You can optimize your content using Content AI which is available in the Rank Math free version [ Limited Credit]. The pro version has generous Content AI credit limits.

But why do we really need content optimization using Content AI?

Well, when you write content, you don’t really know how your content stands against the competitors, how many words you should write, how many images you should insert, and various other parameters to outperform your competitors.

Content AI helps you with the following information so that your can outrank your competitors. The only other tool that does a similar job is WriterZen.

A 404 page shows up when a page is not found in your server but the user is trying to access it. This happens when you submit your blog post URL to google and then delete the post itself.

404 errors have a severe effect on SEO and gradually Google may de-rank your website if you don’t fix it.

The best solution for the 404 error is to redirect the deleted URL to an URL that is currently present on your website.

The rank Math 404 monitor tool will give you insights about your 404 links so that you can fix it

Fortunately, Rank Math has this premium option out of the box. The moment you delete a post, Rant Math will ask you to add a redirect URL.

You can also set a global value for the 404 redirect URL. For example, you can redirect all 404 URL’s to your home page.

Yoast also has this feature but at the cost of a hefty premium for their paid plan. I wonder why Yoast is offering such important features only in paid plans.

Well, now we don’t have any complaints as we have Rank Math to get rid of 404 pages.

You get a 404 error when you delete a post but a user tries to access it. Right? What if you did not delete the post but changed the URL?

The user will still get a 404 error unless you let Google know that you have changed the URL.

How do you do that?

You need to set a redirection to let Google know that the old URL is getting redirected to the new URL. All link juices are also carried forward to the new URL. That’s the beauty of redirection.

There are many types of re-direction, out of that 301, and 302 are very common. Error 301 is for permanent redirection and Error 302 is for temporary redirection.

Rank Math has a well-set mechanism to handle redirection. The moment you change the URL you will be presented with an option to add a redirection URL.

With this feature, you can redirect broken URLs to any good URL you want.

Well, this feature blew me away and I became a die-hard fan of Rank Math. I can’t believe that a free SEO plugin like Rank Math can offer schema markup also.

Schema markup or structured data tells search engines what your post is all about in a structured way.

Those who are not aware of schema markup should look at the below example.

We search for the keyword ” How to cook chicken“. The below snapshot shows what we found.

As you can see that Google is showing the star rating, the number of reviews, how much time is needed to cook chicken, and the step-by-step process, everything on the search result page itself. This is possible because the article has a ” Recipe Schema ” markup.

Similarly, you can add different schema markups based on the type of content you publish.

Rank Math supports the following schema types. Almost all schema types are available in the free version leaving few types for the pro version.

You can set the global schema type during the initial setup wizard as shown below. However, you can override the schema type for individual articles later on also.

To override the schema type for an individual blog post, please follow the instruction shown in the below images.

Rank Math has a nice Gutenberg block to show the schema of your article. The below image shows an example of the ” Software Review” schema. To access the block, type “/schema by rank math“

Do you know how Facebook and other social media platforms pull images when you share a post on those platforms?

It is because of the Open Graph ( OG) meta-tag data.

Open graph meta tags were originally developed by Facebook so that users can post on Facebook with ease and with the required information

Gradually open graph metadata is accepted by other social media platforms and now it’s a must if you want to share your post on Facebook and Twitter.

Rank Math supports OG meta tags and with Rank Math, you can control what is getting shared and how it is getting shared using open graph metadata information.

You can set the global OG metatag data in the initial setup wizard or you can change that for individual posts.

Yoast also supports Open graphs but options are limited and you will hardly have control over those metadata.

The below image shows the snippets of this article and how it will look when we will share this post on Facebook.

Well, offering metadata options is a basic feature that every SEO plugin offers. How Rank Math offers more is that it offers micro-level control of your metadata. You can change metadata for each and every aspect of your blog.

You can change metadata for posts, pages, cloud templates, authors, tags, categories, etc. You can set global meta and also override the metadata for individual posts or pages.

You can also No Index certain pages like Paginated Pages, Search Pages, and password-protected pages that do not add any value in terms of SEO.

Sometimes ” No Index” tags come in handy as you may not like to index everything from your blog. For example, I hate to index Paginated pages as it unnecessarily clutters my google search console.

Image SEO has grown up to be a major factor for your blog SEO. Most SEO plugins do not support image SEO in the free version.

Many of us do not give importance to Image SEO. While writing a post we simply keep on adding images without even bothering about the SEO.

It’s a best practice to add the ALT attribute and title to all images that we upload. That tells the search engine what the image is all about.

Sometimes we miss adding image ALT attributes and that contributes to the poor ranking of that particular post.

Rank Math support image SEO. It can automatically add ALT attributes to images in case you miss them. You can set the default ALT attributes in the settings.

By default, it adds the post title as an ALT attribute but you can set anything you want. This is a very useful feature for newbies who usually miss adding image Alt attributes. Personally, I prefer to add manually as I want to have more control over images.

When you first set up Rank Math, it asks for Google Search console information. If you allow, Rank Math connects to your Google search console and pulls useful analytics and insights about your website.

Other SEO plugins also connect to Google Search Console, but with the amount of information that Rank Math provides, no other SEO plugins offer that.

The rank Math analytics interface is divided into multiple tabs and each tab shows a different and useful set of information.

Please note that Rank Math only shows limited information compared to Google Search Console. So Rank Math can not be a replacement for Google Search Console and Google Analytics

You need to go to Google Search Console and Google Analytics if you want to see more information.

Rank Math Analytics Dashboard

The dashboard shows the overall picture of how your blog or website stands in terms of SEO optimization, search traffic, ranked keywords, etc.

Following pieces of information you will be able to see on the dashboard.

Post-Analytics

The Post Analytics [ Site Analytics] shows the SEO data for all the posts as well as for the individual posts.

As you can see in the below example, 35 articles are doing good in terms of on-page optimization, whereas 5 articles are doing a fair job and one article is very poor.

If we click on individual posts, it will show the SEO data for individual posts as shown below.

SEO Performance

The SEO performance tab shows the overall search console data for the website, like the search traffic, impressions, CTR, total ranked keywords, search clicks, etc.

It also shows search console data for individual posts and pages.

Keyword Data

The keyword tab shows details of all keywords on which the website is ranking. It also shows the keyword positions and details about the top five winning keywords.

Rank Tracker

The rank Tracker tab shows the performance report of your chosen keyword for a given period of time. The “Pro” version allows you to track up to 1000 keywords and the same can be added and monitored under the Rank Tracker tab.

Indexing Status

The indexing status shows the indexing information which is very useful to know if an article is indexed or not. It also shows the schema markup details, mobile usability status, and a set of other useful information.

One of the main pain areas of bloggers is that, even after doing proper SEO, their blogs do not rank.

They get confused about what they are doing wrong. Rank Math can save those bloggers with their inbuilt SEO analysis tool.

Did you see any SEO plugins offering an inbuilt SEO analysis tool? I don’t feel so. At least I can say that Yoast does not offer. But Rank Math does.

So if you head over to the Rank Math SEO analysis tool, it will show you how your website stands on SEO optimization.

Rank Math runs about 36 tests and based on that it shows the score. It also shows which test your blog passed and in which test your blog failed.

Then, you can work on those failed areas and improve your website SEO.

The below example shows the SEO analysis of a test blog. As you can see that it shows a handful set of information.

The SEO analysis feature is available in the free version. Even if you don’t have rank math installed, you can use the below link to check the SEO score of your website.

Here is a nice video from Rank Math to show more details about the SEO Analysis feature.

Local SEO is something that was always ignored by most SEO plugins. Those who are not aware of Local SEO should know that local SEO has recently become an important factor in your business growth, especially if you are targeting a micro geographical location.

For example, If I have a business that mainly targets local customers, then it is very important that I should optimize my business website using local SEO.

Let’s simply the concept with a simple example.

Let’s say that you run a Pizza shop that accepts online orders and you want that whenever people search for “ Pizza Stores Nearby “, your shop should rank first.

How is it possible?

Local SEO can help here. The best thing is that Rank Math has the local SEO feature in the free version itself.

With Rank Math, you can set your business name, website, physical address, operating time, and other sets of information that Google requires to rank your business high in that particular location where you have the business set up.

Rank Math has a Local SEO feature that helps you rank high in your geographical location even though your website has low domain authority.

This is a very useful feature for new business owners as they can quickly grow in their targeted location without doing much SEO effort. Unfortunately, neither Yoast nor other SEO plugins offer this feature in the free version.

A sitemap is a kind of link summary of all the content that you want search engines to crawl and index. However, search engines may choose to crawl other items also unless you have a ” Noindex” tag.

A sitemap is the first thing that a crawler looks for. In fact, we need to submit sitemaps to search engines so that crawlers can index your content quickly.

Rank Math can create and submit sitemaps to search engines automatically.

No other SEO plugin offers that level of customization in the sitemap that Rank Math offers. I wonder how it can offer so many features free of cost.

You can control which type of content ( For example, Post, Page, categories, Tags, Media) you want to include in the sitemap and the types of content you want to exclude.

You can also define the number of links per sitemap.

Google News Sitemap

If your site is approved for Google News, you may need this feature. This feature is only available in the pro version.

Just like a normal sitemap, Google news sitemap also has a set of links to let Google News know what to crawl. Having a Google News sitemap is not mandatory, but it’s better to have it.

If you have a news blog, then this feature will yield more benefits. As soon as you publish a post, the Rank Math instant indexing API will index your post to search engines instantly without waiting for crawlers to crawl and index.

However, there is no guarantee that your post will be indexed instantly.

This is a very useful feature as you will be getting the benefit of being a first mover into the SERP for that particular keyword.

As per Google, instant indexing is meant for news blogs only and should be avoided by others.

AMP is the latest trend in Google searches. No doubt, if your blog is not AMP compatible, you are losing a great chunk of traffic.

All SEO plugins might be good for normal blogs but when we talk about AMP, none offers compatibility. However, Yoast offers an AMP-friendly plugin called Glue. but it suffers from its own set of problems

That’s not the case with Rank Math. It has a dedicated option for AMP and that works brilliantly. I never had an issue with the ranking of AMP pages and Rank Math is the reason for it. So if your blog has an AMP version, go for Rank Math with your eye closed.

There is no separate setting for AMP. You just need to turn on the AMP option on the dashboard and the rest will be taken care of by Rank Math.

If you are using Elementor or Divi, then no need to worry as Rank Math supports both Elementor and Divi. A detailed content analysis is available for both so that you can optimize the content.

Rank Math is the only plugin that supports Elementor and Divi integration.

Rank Math supports Woocommerce. This means you can optimize the product title and description using the content analysis tool.

However, if you want to enjoy all features of Woocommerce SEO, you need to buy the pro plan.

Rank Math automatically adds product schema for Woocommerce. When user rating is enabled, it also shows the aggregateRating and review field.

If you want to know how to set up Rank Math for WooCommerce, then the following video will explain you everything.

How To Set Up Rank Math

Setting up Rank Math is very easy and straightforward. As soon as you install and activate the plugin, the following setup wizard will pop up.

As shown by the arrow, if you don’t have any other SEO plugin installed, Rank Math will show that your website is compatible. Otherwise, it will give the following error if you have other plugins like Yoast already installed.

If you deactivate the plugin and run the setup wizard again you will see the following dialog box for importing Yoast setting.

Once you import the setting, the following dialog box will appear. You need to click on ” Start Wizard“

Enter the details about your site here.

Click on ” Save and Continue” which will take you to the Analytics page.

Here you need to click on ” Connect Google Services” which will ask you for your Google Search Console login Id and password. This step is optional and only required if you want to integrate the Google search console with Rank Math.

Click ” Save and Continue” once done.

Choose what you want to include in the sitemap. If you want, you can customize the sitemap later on also.

Under ” SEO Tweaks” you can set ” No index” for a couple of things that you don’t want the search engine to index.

Once done, click on ” Save and Continue” and you will ask you to ” Setup Advanced Options“

Click on ” Set up Advanced Options” to set a couple of advanced options.

Here is the role manager box which is basically user control settings if your blog is a multi-authored blog. If you are the only author, then no need to enable the setting.

Here is the 404 monitor where you can monitor all hits to 404 pages. You can use ” Redirection manager” to redirect all 404 pages to some live pages.

In the end, you will see the global schema setting page where you can set global schema. However, you can override the schema for individual posts later on.

Once done, click on ” Save And Continue” which will take you to Rank Math setting page. There, all settings are self-explanatory and you can set them as per your SEO goals.

Rank Math Support

I had a bitter experience with Yoast support. Due to the large user base, they don’t even bother about normal users.

I did not see them replying within a day to my queries. After a long wait, I usually get a generic reply which does not make any sense.

Coming to Rank Math, I had an altogether different experience. I had a chance to write to them a couple of times and to my surprise, I see Mr. Bhanu Aluwalia is replying to some of those queries. For those who do not know who is Bhanu, He is the Co-Founder of Rank Math.

Here is one instance where I asked for custom styling in the FAQ block and to my surprise, they assisted me. I have never seen other support teams entertaining custom styling which is basically not their job. So kudus to the Rank Math support team for going out of the box and supporting their customers.

Many times I see they are sending videos to explain the solution to my problems. Wow !!! Is that something that makes sense to you to move to Rank Math?

Rank Math Vs Yoast Vs All In One SEO Vs SEOPress

Rank is a newbie in the market. The market was getting dominated by Yoast for a long time. But Rank Math changed the ball game completely.

Though Rank Math is launched just a few years back, it is giving tough competition to other well-established SEO plugins.

Below is a head-on comparison chart showing the features of Rank Math in comparison to other SEO plugins.

Please note that all below-listed SEO plugins offer a free version too but with limited features. If you plan to use the free version, then Rank Math is the way to go any day.

As you can see, Rank Math offers far more features than its competitors. Now you might be thinking that the cost of Rank Math will be more than others. But it’s not a fact.

In fact, Rank Math is the most value-for-money SEO plugin among all the other SEO plugins listed here, especially if you want to use it for unlimited websites

Rank Math Free Vs Pro

No doubt, the Rank Math free version has all the required features needed for a blog to rank. But Rank Math Pro has many advanced features that will make your life easy and your SEO journey will be smoother.

Here is a detailed comparison of Rank Math Free Vs Pro Vs Business vs Agency. I believe this chart will help you to discover the potential of Rank Math paid versions.

Rank Math Pro Pricing

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Rank Math Pro

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$59 $129

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The following plans are on offer by the Rank Math pro version. Although the free version is already feature-loaded, if you want to explore the full potential of Rank Math, you should try the pro version.

You can check different pro version features before buying by logging into the Rank Math demo website. If you feel happy about it, you can make the purchase.

Rank Math Pro Plan

This is the most value-for-money plan if you are an individual blogger. You can install Rank Math on unlimited websites if you have the pro plan.

You can track up to 1000 keywords under the Analytics section. You will get 25 content AI credits per month.

Rank Math Business Plan

If you are running a small agency, then this plan is the best. You can install Rank Math on up to 200 websites.

The content AI limit is 200 per month. You can track up to 20000 keywords which is massive compared to what is being offered in the pro plan.

Rank Math Agency Plan

Not really a value-for-money plan, but if you are running a big agency, then this plan may suffice your need.

You can install Rank Math on 750 websites, track 75000 keywords, and the content AI limit is 750 per month. So the resource limit is very generous in this plan.

Content AI Credit

The free plan comes with 5 content AI credits whereas the pro plan comes with 25 Content AI credits.

In case you need more credits, you can buy it separately, and here is the pricing. Even if you have the free plan, you can buy content AI credits.

You need to consume the purchased AI credit within one year. Otherwise, the remaining credit will expire.

Client Management

Rank Math has a nice and intuitive dashboard through which you can manage all your websites from a single page. You can also see how individual sites are performing in terms of SEO. You don’t have to log in to individual sites to see the stats.

You can set the keyword limits and content AI limit from the dashboard itself to ensure that you are not running out of your quota.

To access client management, you need the Rank Math business plan.

Client management feature comes in handy when you run an agency and handle thousands of customers.

Rank Math Review

Not only me who is praising Rank Math, but many digital marketing experts and business owners are talking good things about Rank Math. This shows how good and popular Rank Math is. Here is the proof.

As you can see below that most users rated 5 stars for Rank Math. Even the free version has almost a 5-star rating.

Rank Math Pros And Cons

How To Score 100/100 In Rank Math On-Page SEO?

Although I never run for scoring 100, I try to write for humans and not for Google. If anyone wants to try to achieve 100, they may follow the below best practices but there is no guarantee that you will achieve 100.

Final Thoughts: Rank Math Review

Rank Math is a new entrant in the SEO plugins list for WordPress. But it is more powerful and feature-packed than any other plugins available out there in the WordPress repository.

Although Yoast is the leader of SEO plugins, lately it is bringing so many bugs that it’s the right time to try Rank Math.

As per my knowledge Rank Math is currently used by many pro bloggers and you may find numerous positive reviews.

So if you feel that the feature list in Yoast free version is locking the ultimate potential of your blog, then try Rank Math and I am sure you gonna love it.

My final recommendation between Yoast Vs Rank Math would be Rank Math. For any questions or queries on Rank Math, please write to me in the comment section and I will be happy to assist you.

Rank Math Pro

Rank Math is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. The free version itself comes with many premium features that other competitors are dared to offer. The pro version has gone one step further and is offering some industry-first features that you won’t get in any other SEO plugins.

Price: $59

Price Currency: USD

Operating System: Linux

Application Category: WordPress Plugin

Editor's Rating:
4.9

Frequently Asked Questions On Rank Math review

Rank Math Review: Is It The Best WordPress SEO Plugin?

$59 $129

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